-itok=S7FYiSnA.jpg)
Last Saturday, the Judiciary Council of the Association of Amherst Students released their decision on the election complaint concerning the elections held on April 5. The JC decided to nullify the results of the presidential and treasurer elections, while not punishing any of the elections’ candidates, and to run a new election for those two races. The JC also decided to release the results of the vice president, secretary and judiciary council chair positions.
On March 16, the President’s Office sent an email to students and other members of the College community announcing the Comprehensive Fee for the 2012-2013 academic year. The fee, which covers tuition, room and board, will be increased to $55,510. This represents a four percent increase over the 2011-2012 fee, making it approximately double the rate of inflation over the same period of time.
On March 30, two Amherst students, Bess Hanish ’13 and Khan Shoieb ’13, received the Truman Scholarship, a prestigious award given to “find and recognize college juniors with exceptional leadership potential who are committed to careers in government, the nonprofit or advocacy sectors, education or elsewhere in the public service.” The Truman Scholarship was created in 1975 as a living memorial to the eponymous president and is administered by the Truman Foundation, an indepedent federal executive branch agency led by former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright.
This past Thursday marked the most recent installment of what has become a long-standing Amherst College tradition, the Hawaiian Luau in Valentine Dining Hall. While on the schedule this event might have looked much like another event in Val’s World Cuisine series, the posters that were put up warning students that Val would close at 1:30 p.m. after lunch Thursday afternoon to prepare for dinner set this one apart.
While television and movies have struggled to migrate to the internet and take advantage of the boundless possibilities it offers, video games, as a relatively young medium, have been fortunate enough to evolve hand-in-hand with internet and online communities. More so than traditional media, the video game industry has embraced the internet as a rich digital distribution system, allowing developers and publishers to get their games out to a large audience. Digital distribution doesn’t only apply to PCs, mind you.
On March 26, The Mars Volta released their fifth album, “Noctourniquet.” For any who aren’t familiar, the album title should provide a clear indicator that their music isn’t exactly main-stream. The Texas-formed outfit definitely isn’t for everyone; calling them esoteric would be charitable. But they’re also one of the most accomplished rock acts of the past 10 years, and they’re almost single-handedly keeping progressive rock alive for whoever wants to listen. And when I say progressive, I do mean progressive.
You might not be familiar with the name Lasse Hallström, but if you were once a softie like me who used to fall for eye-candy cinematography, a twist of love and life philosophy and breezy plots, you might have dwelled happily on such films as “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” (1993), “The Cider House Rules” (1999), “Casanova” (2005) or “Dear John” (2010), all crowd-pleasers directed by him.
